Today’s News

Actress Deborah Raffin Dies at 59

Actress Deborah Raffin, who starred in several television movies and miniseries and later ran an audiobook company, died Wednesday of leukemia in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times reports. She was 59.

Raffin was born in Los Angeles and was discovered by a talent agent during her sophomore year in college, according to the Times.

In 1985, she and her husband, Michael Viner, launched Dove Books-on-Tape, which went on to produce titles like Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time and become one of the premiere companies in the audiobook industry. The title of the company was inspired by Raffin's second film, The Dove. The couple sold the business in 1997 and divorced in 2005.

Though Raffin never became a household name in the United States, she was a fairly big star in China, thanks in part to the success of one of her first made-for-TV movies, Nightmare in Badham County. In 1981, she had the dubious honor of being nominated for both a Golden Globe and a Razzie Award for her performance in Touched by Love.